This is a thread about suicide and ambivalence toward it... [View all]

I'm getting ready to go to work tonight and one of the beds there is going to be empty. I just learned that one of the patients in the (*outpatient*) residence hung herself at approximately 4:00am.

The facility I work at is sort of like a half-way house for young adults suffering from psychiatric and emotional problems. I refer to it as a half-way house because many come to us following psychiatric hospitalization for any number of reasons -- suicide attempt, self-injury, eating disorder, and PTSD among others.

This patient, 26, had been in and out of hospitals for the better part of a decade and had had 2 prior suicide attempts. She used to tell me, with hands to her head, "I hate my brain!" exasperated that tortuous self-injury thoughts had returned. I had come to learn that happiness was a bright red flag. She couldn't bear being happy. Tuesday night she had gone to a musical. When she returned to the residence, she was joyfully blissful, exclaiming she'd "remember this night for the rest of her life!"

There is a part of me that says she's finally found a way to soothe herself, and therein lies my ambivalence toward suicide. In her case, it wasn't vengeful or an angry act. It was a way to find relief, relief from a brain that, in short, had been trying to kill her for years.